This involved an involuntary contraction of my entire body. The skin turns white
as adrenaline causes blood to leave the surface tissues and into the vasodilation
of the skeletal muscles to be ready for action. My face was white and my hair
stuck out like I had been electrocuted and my intestines, liver, spleen and other
viscera curled up and were fiercely contracted for days. Motor control was greatly
impaired and the freeze response, endorphin numbing, (and possible nitric oxide
damage) leaves us with the dissociated feeling of “not being in our body.” In fact
I was so disembodied that morning that I had a Hakomi session (body-centered
psychotherapy) to try and put myself back in my body. The Hakomi exercises
worked to a degree, at least to help me feel less like a car crash victim or dissociated
robot. After any such autonomic shock it is imperative to shake, dance, run, to push
against walls with arms, back and legs and make expressive noises to eliminate the
stored tension of the freeze response from the body. Dr. Robert Scaer’s book The
Trauma Spectrum is a great source of information on the freeze response, trauma
and PTSD. http://www.trauma-pages.com/scaer-2001.htm —Dr. Robert Scaer.
(There is more information on the White Shock in the Nitric Oxide section)
After this radical expansion and contraction the full conflagration of kundalini
heat came on, along with intense heart pressure and mystic ecstasies. My left-brain
continued to be so contracted that my left scalp, extending into the face and neck
was radically numb. The numbness becoming more prominent when the flow of
kundalini increased during its monthly progressions. I didn’t experience a lot of
pain but I did have discomfort and intolerance for the overpowering intensity of
the energy. Of course going “with it” rather than resisting or running from it is the
answer. To breathe into it and raise the energy up, without fear.
Philip St. Romain in “Kundalini Energy and Christian Spirituality,” says that his
kundalini symptoms of the crab, the pincers and the sword on his head, became
more painful when he deviated from spiritual alignment into various things like
TV, reading, writing, certain foods etc...This pain kept him on track to more fully
enter his surrender. Philip St. Romain attributed great significance in the tucking
in of the chin to facilitate the free flow of energy between the body and the head,
and thought his symptom of the Crab was due to not practicing this neck-lock
posture during prayer. He assumed the Crab effect was the result of pressurized
cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles. Since the left-brain freeze always occurs along
with radical heart expansion, the numbness might be related to the vasodilators:
histamine, nitric oxide, serotonin and acetylcholine. But whatever it is it must be
pretty substantial chemistry to exist for more than 3 years at varying intensity. As I
mentioned, since the left eyelid was redder on looking toward the sun, suggesting
the vessels were dilated, this leads me to assume that the expanded state of the
heart and associated dilated blood vessels is a major contributor to the left-brain
freeze effect. Could the lowered blood pressure caused by the expanded vessels
create this numbness, and why only on the left side if the effect is neurotransmitter
based. The numbness actually occurs along with what feels like pretty intense head
pressures especially in the prefrontal lobes. The logical answer is that the numbness
is endorphin based, but there again why only on the left side of the brain.